The Mycenaean ship was larger than it needed to be for its stated purpose.
Lysander noticed this from the harbor master's office window before anyone had disembarked. A trading delegation did not require a trireme escort. A trireme escort said something that the cargo manifest did not — that whoever was on board was important enough to protect, or important enough to appear to need protection, which was a different kind of statement but arrived at the same conclusion.
*He is not sending merchants,* Lysander thought. *He is sending a message in the shape of a man.*
He went down to meet it.
---
The protocol was elaborate.
